ACA Education Committee Candidate 2021: Cassandra Eagle
 East Tennessee State University (ETSU)
Education
B. Sc. Chemistry, Pfeiffer College (1984); Ph. D. Chemistry, University of Toledo (1986);
Employment
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Texas A&M University (1987 – 1988); Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teaching and Research Fellow, Trinity University (1988 – 1989); Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Williams College (1989 – 1992); Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Appalachian State University (1992 – 1995); Associate Professor of Chemistry, Appalachian State University (1995 – 2000); Professor of Chemistry, Appalachian State University (2000 – 2010); Chair and Professor of Chemistry, East Tennessee State University (2010 – 2016); Professor of Chemistry, East Tennessee State University (2016 – present)
Professional Activities, Honors and Awards
Dean's List, Pfeiffer College; Who's Who Among American Colleges and Universities (1984); Sigma Xi Graduate Research Symposium Award (1986); Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teaching and Research Fellow (1988); ASU Faculty Advisor Award (1994 and 2001); University of Toledo Distinguished Alumni Lecturer (1995); College of Arts & Sciences Academy of Outstanding Teachers (1997); North Carolina Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award for Appalachian State University (2002); National Science Foundation Solid State Chemistry Summer Research Award (2005); ETSU Jewell Friend Award (2014), American Chemical Society Member (1986 – present); American Crystallographic Association Member (2019 - ); ACA Poster Prize Judge (2019); ACA Transactions Committee (2020).
Statement
Since my days as an undergraduate, I have been dedicated to becoming the best teacher I can be by using models, concepts and analogies. I am not interested in “dumbing down” chemistry (or crystallography) to make it easier to understand; I am interested in helping people understand at a high level by connecting them with a concept they already understand. This is particularly important now when there are so many people skeptical and/or afraid of science. Thus, when I teach chemistry, I use analogies that reach people at their level of understanding and bring them to the next level (or hopefully, higher) of understanding. For example; when teaching General Chemistry, I start with; if two people want to have a non-virtual, face-to-face conversation, they need to be on the same floor of a building and in the same room. Then, I relate this to the quantum numbers n and l. Once I have made a connection, I move forward to explain the context in the sense of electrons. This style of teaching has afforded me awards for teaching excellence through the years (see above).
When I moved to ETSU in 2010, part of my start up package was a Single Crystal X-ray Diffractometer (Rigaku XtaLab Mini). For the last 11 years, I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching crystallography to my students. In that time, I mentored 9 undergraduate and 8 graduate students in crystallography. I enjoy it most when I see their eyes light up when they realize that they independently solve a structure. I am now working to popularize crystallography in undergraduate and graduate schools. It is my goal to have a diffractometer be as important as an nmr spectrometer in colleges and universities.
I am honored to be nominated and it is my goal, if elected, to use what I have learned through the years to reach the general public and help them understand that crystallography has a plethora of gifts when the mind is opened to education.
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